Derbyshire 212-4 (du Plooy 66*, Ali 59, Guest 39*)
Yorkshire 68 all out (Chappell 3-16, Scrimshaw 2-8, McKiernan 2-10, Thomson 2-22, Khan 1-12)
Derbyshire won by 144 runs
I have been racking my brains to think of a more complete 20 over performance than the one delivered by Derbyshire today.
We didn’t just beat a Yorkshire side coming into the game on a lengthy winning run, we destroyed them. Annihilated them. Spifflicated them. It was a very special performance that showed the talent in this side when the mood takes them.
It didn’t look that way early. Harry Came played some nice shots, but he, Reece and Madsen were all gone inside the first seven overs, the latter overestimating his powers of acceleration and underestimating the speed of Thompson, who to be fair had spent most of the game to that point limping.
Slowly but surely du Plooy and Haider Ali rebuilt the innings. The latter looks a different player since he moved down the order and will have enjoyed the Chesterfield festival week. Some of his shots today were magnificent, the highlight being a cut behind square for six. He is a delightfully wristy player and it is just a shame that we experimented with him as an opener. We wouldn’t have done that with Mohammad Azharuddin and we shouldn’t have with Haider Ali.
He was just starting to break loose when he was brilliantly caught on the boundary edge by Jafer Chohan, just short of a second successive six. That should have served as an aide memoire for Shan Masood that the latter was in the team, as he was strangely not asked to bowl his leg spin today. When your number eleven plays as a non-batting specialist it suggested that t’rudder had gone.
Yet the advent of Guest to join du Plooy simply signalled an onslaught as we have never seen. 93, NINETY-THREE came from the last five and a half overs as both batters found and cleared the boundary with astonishing regularity. Why Ben Mike, who had already seen his three overs go for 43 runs, was asked to bowl the final over is beyond me, but bowling first to the Derbyshire skipper and then to Guest he saw it go 6-6-6-1-6-6. The game was still slightly in favour of Yorkshire with 3/4 of the Derbyshire innings gone, yet by the end of it the referee really needed to stop the fight.
Guest is a very fine player and adds speedy running to power, while du Plooy in this vein is international class. As he did at Birmingham, he simply took the bowling apart and they had no answer to him. I don’t think many would, because when he plays in front of the wicket he is a serious player.
On a ground where 160-170 is a par score, the visitors needed a steady start, but inside 19 balls they were 7-4 and the game was gone. Alex Thomson, in his first T20 appearance of the summer, removed Lyth and Malan, while Chappell at the other end took 3-16 to further confirm his credentials as a very good and oft-underrated bowler in this format.
There was no way back. Masood is a fine player, but not as destructive as some. When he spooned an easy catch to Reece at midwicket, it was fairly academic. The Derbyshire fielders had plenty of opportunity to work on their high catching and they were all taken with aplomb. The rockets of Scrimshaw and Khan were in reserve and they were far too good for the remaining Yorkshire batters.
It was Derbyshire’s biggest T20 win, Yorkshire’s heaviest defeat, as well as their lowest score in the format. It was, in short, carnage.
It is a result that will live long in the memory of Derbyshire supporters. More crucially, it puts them right back in the mix for qualification, does and the middle order now looks a very serious unit. The odds are still against them and they need to win them all from now, but that one gladdened the heart.
What do you reckon, a Christmas gift set with a DVD of the game, and a bottle of eau de Yorkshire tears?
Joking apart, that was a very special performance, on one of the loveliest of grounds and in front of a capacity crowd.
Michael Palin, Emily Brontë, Jeremy Clarkson, Judi Dench, Sean Bean…your boys took one hell of a beating today…
My old Dad, missing for his first Father’s Day, would have loved that one.
